Bar clamps have been used for many years for clamping together various articles for various purposes. For example, two articles can be temporarily held together by a conventional bar clamp for joining the two articles together via welding, gluing, or another joining operation. Typically, a manual quick-action bar clamp is desirable in such an operation, wherein the articles can be manually clamped together in a substantially fast and simple clamping operation.
A conventional manual quick-action bar clamp, for example, comprises a bar, a fixed jaw attached to the bar, and a moveable jaw that generally slides along the bar. The moveable jaw further comprises a handle and a drive mechanism coupled to a clamping trigger, wherein the moveable jaw is operable to be advanced along the bar by a manual squeezing of the clamping trigger with respect to the handle. Upon squeezing the clamping trigger, the drive mechanism advances the moveable jaw toward the fixed jaw in a one-way fashion, wherein the moveable jaw is generally prevented from moving away from the fixed jaw. Thus, the moveable jaw is substantially ratcheted along the bar by the drive mechanism, therein providing a clamping force on the articles between the jaws. The conventional quick-action bar clamp, for example, further comprises a quick-release trigger, wherein the quick-release trigger is operable to generally disengage the drive mechanism from the bar, therein generally releasing the clamping force and de-clamping the articles.
Conventional manual quick-action bar clamps are advantageous over threaded clamps (e.g., conventional C-clamps or the like), wherein the quick-action bar clamp can be held, clamped, and de-clamped with one hand of the user, therein leaving the user's other hand free to position the articles, or to perform an operation such as a welding together of the articles. Conventional manual quick-action bar clamps, however, have several drawbacks. For example, the conventional drive mechanism is generally ratcheted along the bar by a repeated manual squeezing of the clamping trigger. Also, in order to obtain a sufficient clamping force, the clamping trigger is generally squeezed with a substantial amount of force by the user. Such repetitive and/or substantial squeezing of the clamping trigger, for example, can cause repetitive stress injuries to the hand of the user when the clamp is used on a regular basis, such as in a production environment.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for an ergonomic quick-action bar clamp that is operable to provide a large clamping force while limiting an amount of repetitive stress to the user.